Childhood?

I was born in London in 1990 at 8pm, a fact that I only know as my mother missed Coronation Street as a result. I don’t remember much about the first couple of years of my life, this is probably because I was happy, although it would make more sense that it was because I was unhappy and blocked out my past as a result. My second year alive doesn’t make up any prominent memories, I’m sure I was happy as I’ve seen photos of myself running around parks with a harness on, attempting to escape my happy childhood. My sister is 12 years my senior which meant that for the first decade of my life I was surrounded by teenage girls, perfume and electric reggae rave music. I was happy back then because I had no worries and the world was still being nice to me.
When I was about six, my twenty year old cousin came to stay with us for what turned into a year. He was my idol for that year; I followed him around and tried to be like him anyway I could. He worked on building sites and was the essence of cool. I came to the assumption that I needed a denim jacket like him as this was the source of his coolness. I got a denim jacket and soon became cooler than he, as I realised my idol was sleeping on my mother’s couch and infringing on my cartoon time at 6am on Saturday mornings, by being severely hung over and not enjoying the pyrotechnics involved in creating a power rangers megazord.
I remember being happy when I was about 9, I wasn’t the most popular guy in school and using my childish mind decided that to be popular I needed to do what the most popular person was doing. That person happened to be a girl and as a result I took up trampolining, a “sport” unlike any other. I attending trampolining class in my local sports hall, my first mistake was in choosing to do trampolining. I was the only male in the class except for the trainer who resembled James Brown. When I first attempted to jump, it was horrific. I fell into the well placed soft mats beside the trampoline straight away. Well it was fun for the week I went, but I didn’t see it as a sport and would just do whatever unacceptable jumps I wanted. After that I was asked to leave as my jumping skills weren’t up to scratch and I was holding the class back.
Another time I remember being happy in my childhood was when I did Russian Judo for a couple of months. I was about 13 and had been in secondary school for a year when my Russian friend who was being bullied started doing judo to learn how to counter his adversaries. I decided to join him and in doing so, added to my list of bizarre pastimes. I enjoyed judo as it enabled me for an hour a week to fight with other people in the class and not get into trouble, which appealed to me when I was 13. On the other hand the judo I was taught was all in Russian so I just had to follow what the others were doing and copy their mistakes. I did learn 3 words of Russian during my Communistic defence classes which I think will forever be scarred into my brain, Da, Neit and Vodka.
I feel childhood is one of the few times in life where time doesn’t matter and everything makes us happy, whether it’s Russian judo or denim jackets. With age comes added responsibility and stress, none of which are as fun as trampolining.